Dear World

05/29/2026

My parents, American father and Japanese mother were missionaries in Japan.

I was raised in Tokyo and attended the American School in Japan. I met an Australian girl in our senior year, and after graduation in 1974 , at the age of 17, I traveled to Australia to be with her.

I promised my parents I would be back in 6 months to attend college.

My parents retired in 1997 and moved to California.
September 09, 2001 when the Twin Towers were attacked, my brother was working at a Japanese Bank in the South Tower of the World Trade Center. By some miracle, he was called to a meeting in midtown that morning.

This reminded me that I had been living in Australia away from family for almost 3 decades.

So, 29 years later than the 6 months I had told my parents I would be in Australia, I decided to relocate my family to California.

It took 2 years to sell businesses and real estate in an orderly fashion and in 2004 we moved across the Pacific.

I was able to spend the next 12 years with my parents, and in the last years able to take time off and attend to their needs. Driving them to medical appointments, doing their grocery shopping and more.

I never told my parents the true cost of relocating from Australia to California was probably in excess of $2mm, selling businesses when the Australian dollar was worth only 50 cents US.

Having to recreate myself at the age of 48.

My parents passed away within 9 months of each other. I spoke with them well in advance, and came up with a plan for burial that they both loved.

They were to be cremated. I would keep the ashes of the first to pass. When the other passed I would arrange for their ashes to be commingled in a biodegradable urn.

That summer we traveled to Japan and released their ashes in a lake in Nagano Prefecture, in front of our cabin. A cabin my father spent every summer renovating. The place we all think of as home.

When it came time to write my brain tattoo, I had just returned from leaving my parents ashes in the lake.

I wrote, I WAS A GOOD SON, on my forehead.

Writing something so emotional, caused me to look at the camera lens differently. It looked into my soul. (continued in comments)

05/28/2026

"Les survivants de la tuerie d'Orlando témoignent dans une série de portraits bouleversants”

One year after the Orlando shooting, which killed 49 people on June 12, 2016, Dear World collected testimonies from people connected to the tragedy — from survivors and victims’ loved ones to members of the local police force.

Photographed in black and white by Daymon Gardner for Vanity Fair France, each portrait carries a thought, a quote, or a feeling written on the body, turning memory into something visible and deeply human.

Full article available in our story.

05/26/2026

Dear Discernment,

My dad turned 86 last week.

He's a retired trial attorney whose life lessons still arrive on yellow legal pads.

His favorite advice? Pick Two Hills To Die On.

"For years I have spoken about decisions as if they were 'a hill worth dying on,'" he says. "It is useful on small decisions like whether I continue to drink diet pop to which I am happily addicted. I take the easy route and continue to drink diet pop."

But it works for the big stuff too. Kids, marriage, career, relationships.

Here's the exercise: Write down the five things you're fighting hardest for right now. The stuff keeping you up, the stuff you'd defend to anyone. Now cross out three.

The two that survive? Those are your hills. The other three aren't gone forever.

They're just not worth dying for because they might be diet pop hills.

Sincerely,
Rob

05/23/2026

It's peak COVID before 6 feet became 5 then 3 then none.

I'm in a hospital in New Orleans. I've come here to interview and photograph Intensive Care Unit nurses.

They walk into Covidland in astronaut suits.
I meet Katie 30 interviews in. I'm tired, hungry, listened out.

Heaviness. Vocation. Saving people. Not saving people.

Listening to people who are used to seeing people die say versions of I've been a nurse for X but I have never seen anything like this.

Katie tells me about her ritual when a patient dies.

"I wash their faces. I put chapstick on their lips, change their gown and say a prayer. And I do it even when no one is around. Because they had a name. They loved, they dreamed, they feared, they experienced moments and moved through to an experience that one day we'll all have."

Interview 31. Katie Gage. And I just lose it. Blubbery, snotty, where's-a-tissue, I'm-sorry-I'm-crying lose it.
I haven't hugged someone in 6 months.

"Come here,"she says. "It's okay."

She hugs me.

05/23/2026

Really special.

Dear The Invisible, You've tried to get the best of me. But I'm a warrior. A lump in my jaw led to the discovery of a nodule on my thyroid. Doctors did a biopsy and eventually removed it. Everyone told me I was so lucky to have "the good cancer." Chemo and radiation wouldn't be…

05/22/2026

When Leilani was three months old, she was diagnosed with Malignant Rhabdoid Tumor of the liver, a very rare cancer with a survival rate of about 20%.

In 2021, I participated in a St. Baldrick’s event and shaved my head to raise money for childhood cancer research and awareness. St. Baldrick’s is a foundation best known for its head-shaving events, where people shave their heads in solidarity with children who often lose their hair during cancer treatment, while raising funds for lifesaving pediatric cancer research. Since 2005, St. Baldrick’s events have raised more than $369 million for childhood cancer research.

And how is Leilani now?

After seven rounds of chemotherapy and one life-saving surgery, she was cancer free. On June 1, she will celebrate seven years cancer free!

CC Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital

05/22/2026

Follow the The EO Report!

Fifteen years ago, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Robert Fogarty started asking people in New Orleans who were rebuilding their lives to write a message. In one sentence, they wrote their stories on their bodies, which Robert then photographed.

Over the years, he has continued his project: Dear World. Robert gives people around the globe a mechanism and the permission to express themselves and share their most powerful and vulnerable moments.

Now, he also takes his project to the stage, creating an interactive experience that brings people together, builds trust, and fosters belonging.

An incredible storyteller, we were honored to get his perspective for The EO Report: https://www.theeoreport.com/resources/robert-fogarty

05/21/2026

What an incredible day of connection. Thank you, , for exploring the power of storytelling and how shared values can strengthen the connection within your team.

05/18/2026

Dear Enoughness,

I once photographed a woman named Mariana when she was a college student at St. John’s University.

When she was 11, she met her father for the first time.

They went to Disney World. For a little while, it looked like the story she had imagined might come true.

Then, when she was 14, he denied she was his daughter in court.

She took a DNA test to prove she was his.

A court may call that procedure. A lawyer may call it evidence. A file may call it documentation.

But Mariana heard something else:
I am not enough.

By 16, that sentence had followed her into hallways, mirrors, friendships, crushes, text messages, and the fragile architecture of teenage love.

So when a boy did not want to be with her, that was the catalyst, but it was not the whole story.

For the next two years, every mistake became evidence.

Every rejection became confirmation. Every wrong turn joined the case against her.

Then another sentence arrived like lightning:
Your dad is an irresponsible person who missed out on a great kid. This has nothing to do with you.
Something clicked.
His absence was not on her.

Years later, Mariana stood in front of her peers and told this story with her photo projected behind her.
I think about Mariana when I think about worthiness.
I think about the ache in my own chest, the one that once hurt so badly I thought it might never leave. I felt it while I grieved my brother, battled insecurity, and asked myself the private, humiliating question that finds nearly all of us eventually: Am I enough?

Viktor Frankl warned against measuring another person’s suffering from the outside. He compared suffering to gas in a chamber. No matter the size of the room, the gas expands until it fills the whole space.

Suffering behaves that way too. Whether the world calls the wound large or small, it can still fill the soul of the person carrying it.

Mariana is enough. So am I. So are you.

Sincerely,
RXF

P.S. This post was inspired by Blake Mycoskie’s new show, No Magic Pill. Hearing him talk about success, worthiness, and the inner work no outside achievement and his new project, We are Enough: .